Have you ever noticed something about the scriptures, and specifically, the Book of
Mormon? The sections of this book that generally people would say get a little harder to stay
focused on, some would call them the more boring sections of the book -- in almost every case,
we’re talking about the House of Israel in those sections, whether it be the Isaiah chapters,
or some of the long speeches about the House of Israel, about the scattering and the gathering,
whether it's Zenos’s allegory, all of this is about the House of Israel.
We get introduced to that, for the first time in the Book of Mormon,
in 1st Nephi chapter 19, 20, 21, 22, where Nephi really starts to take on,
in a direct way, the role of this family. So, what you have is the whole world of people,
and God has picked this one little cluster, this one little family, this group,
descendants of Abraham and Sarah – specifically, the House of Israel. That becomes this covenant
family that God is going to work through to try to bless all of the inhabitants of the earth,
eventually. Abraham is promised, through your seed, I'll bless all the world.
Well, the Lord works with this family throughout the Old Testament. They get into the promised
Land, eventually. They’re going to split into two kingdoms: the northern kingdom,
and the southern kingdom. If we look at a simple map of the Holy Land, here you have Jerusalem.
Here, you have the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. Basically,
He's dividing the land, separate, the promised land for this chosen family, because that's
part of the covenant, is I will give you a land, and I'll give you possessions, and I'll give you
that priesthood power and authority. Why? So you can eventually bless all nations of the earth.
Well, things go great until they split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom
has ten tribes. It's called the kingdom of Israel. The southern kingdom has two tribes,
called the kingdom of Judah. In 721 BC, Assyria came to war, and they carried away this northern
ten-tribe group captive. So, they killed many of them, they spread and scattered them;
that’s what we call the scattering of the tribes of Israel. It occurred in 721 BC.
This sets up a very clear distinction in scripture,
and especially for the Book of Mormon. Moving forward, you’re going to have three different
groups of people that are mentioned over, and over, and over again in the scriptures,
in the New Testament and in the Book of Mormon. You’re going to have the Jews, that usually
refer to those in the kingdom of Judah, or the tribe of Judah, combined with Benjamin,
that’s subsumed into the tribe of Judah, as far as this label is concerned. So, you have
the Jews. Jesus is a Jew. All of his Twelve Apostles are Jews. His work is among the Jews.
Then, the second group that becomes important is scattered Israel. So,
these are those who are of the House of Israel, but they have been scattered. They have been
spread throughout the world, and there is some intermixing and intermarrying that is going on.
Then the largest group by far is the Gentiles. So, when you see the word “Gentiles”, all it
means is non-Israelite. It’s somebody that wasn't in that family of Abraham and Sarah,
originally, descended down through Jacob. And so, the whole gospel flow in scripture is,
the first time Jesus comes to the earth as a Jew, he brings the gospel, first,
to the Jews. Then, he takes it to scattered Israel next, through his apostles. And then,
his last command before he ascends is, now take the gospel “into all the world...preach
the gospel to every creature.” Now, we’re going to go to all the Gentiles.
In our day, in the latter days, this is one of the many ways that you could fulfill the
scripture “[the] first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” He now brings
the gospel to the earth through what would have, traditionally, back in biblical times,
been considered Gentiles: people with European ancestry, for the most part,
married into the family of Israel probably. But we go first to the Gentiles; now, it's the Gentiles
in the scriptures that are taking the gospel to scattered Israel, who will eventually then,
ultimately, take it to the Jews. So, as you're reading in this set of chapters, pay attention
when he uses the word “Israel”, when he uses the word “Jews”, when he uses the word “Gentiles”, and
watch the scattering and the gathering unfold, and how Nephi is using Isaiah to talk about how God
is doing his work of blessing all the people in the earth, not just those of the house of Israel.
And today, in the latter days, there are a lot of people who may wonder, well,
who are the Jews today? Or, who are the Gentiles today, and how does this all fit in? If you go
to 1st Nephi chapter 20 verse 1, he says -- this is a comparison to Isaiah chapter 48 -- he says,
“Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come
forth out of the waters of Judah...”. And then Joseph added a little prophetic clarification
of what the “waters of Judah” are, with “...or out of the waters of baptism...”. The point is,
anyone in the whole world can become a part of the covenant family by entering the waters of
baptism. That's how you get into that covenant relationship with God, so that all of the
blessings given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can also be given to us today, in the latter days.
You've probably heard the phrase that we should “...come unto Christ, and be perfected in him...”
or be faithful, and move forward in faith on the covenant path. Sometimes we struggle to
know how to do that. In 1st Nephi chapters 16, 17, and 18, we see beautiful examples
of how Nephi demonstrates what it means to “come unto Christ”, and to trust in him,
and to move forward. At multiple phases in this story, whether it's being hungry and breaking the
bow, or following the directions on the Liahona through the more fertile parts of the wilderness,
or getting the command to build a ship, do something he's never done before, whatever
it may be, Nephi is demonstrating a pattern for us that Elder David A. Bednar has spoken about,
that I think is really helpful for students of the scriptures, as you move forward. It's
the different aspects of faith: what it means to have faith, and act in faith.
Elder Bednar, in a great talk called “Seek Learning by Faith”,
shares the three aspects of faith. he says there's faith that is more of a belief, and
that is the assurance level of faith. If I have enough assurance, and enough of that raw belief,
it will cause me to then act in faith. It will take me to the action level of faith,
where I'm doing something. And that action level of faith will result in the Lord giving
me some sort of an indication that what I did was in accordance with his will: the evidence
level. You’ll notice that the way this works in a flow, Elder Bednar said that it becomes,
actually for us, a spiral staircase. So, that evidence from one sequence of our life then
becomes a higher level of assurance for us the next time we face a trial of faith, or a decision,
or having to move forward in belief. And this then becomes the way that we increase in our capacity
to trust in God and act at higher, and higher, and higher levels of faith, as we progress on
that covenant path. So, as you read through all of these stories in the Book of Mormon, watch not
only for those who are following this pattern of increasing their faith and exercising their faith,
but the opposite is also true. Any spiral staircase can be walked upward, or slid downward.
And so, you’re going to watch as Nephi works with his brothers, for instance, to try to get them
to act in faith, but he doesn't put the focus there. That’s what they are struggling to do,
so he brings them back, and he spends most of his time in chapter 17 trying to shore up their
belief, their assurance, giving them example after example after example, preaching to them
to try to get their assurance up so they will then act in faith and help him build the ship. You are
going to see both positive and negative examples of this cycle that Elder Bednar shared with us.
So, in this section, we are talking about 1st Nephi 16 through 22. It’s the conclusion of the
journey to the promised land. And, in many ways, Nephi is narrating his family's story in the
guise of the Israelites, who also were led to the promised land, and Nephi narrates his own life,
in part, through the perspective of Moses. In some ways, Nephi is the new Moses,
who faithfully leads people to the promised land. In fact, I think it is interesting that,
just like Moses, who led the people safely through the waters to the promised land,
Nephi did too. He parted the waters. Well, God parted the waters using a boat. With Moses,
he literally parted the waters; with Nephi, they use a boat to get through the waters safely to
the promised land. So, it’s these interesting literary and spiritual details that interlink.
Now, we are not going to spend a lot of time on every aspect of these chapters,
but what we should point out is the covenantal context that Nephi is trying to share with
us about the covenant path. Remember from the Bible, two major covenants:
God made promises to Abraham, and covenanted to deliver those promises to his children,
and then what we do to receive those promises is covenant back to God,
and that covenant was offered to the children of Israel and their descendants at Mount Sinai.
And we have the interweaving of these covenants showing up in 1st Nephi chapter 17. God comes to
Nephi and says, build a boat. And Nephi had never built a boat. The reasonable,
sensible thing for Nephi to say at this moment is, okay, God. That's an interesting thing. I've never
built a boat. Could you have somebody else do it? Instead, what Nephi does is immediately asks,
where do I get the oar so I can make tools to build a boat? Nephi doesn't protest that
he doesn't know what he's doing. Why is that? Because Nephi, like Abraham, had learned to trust
God. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a God you can trust. That's the whole point of
the Abrahamic covenant. Nephi expresses total and implicit trust in God. God knows what he's
doing. If he asked me to build a boat, well, then he's going to provide a way to make that happen.
We see, of course, the brothers, Laman and Lemuel, don't believe at all. They don't trust God;
they think it's ridiculous. Now, it’s interesting: there is some suggestion that Laman's name comes
from two ancient Semitic words: “not believing”, or “not faithful”. We've seen, in other videos
that the word, “aman”, in Hebrew, means “belief”, or “faith”. And in ancient Semitic languages, the
word “la” can mean “not”. So actually, even today in Arabic, which is a Semitic language, to say
“no”, you say “la”. So, there's this possibility that Laman's name literally means “la aman”,
“not believing”, “not faithful”. And if you look carefully at the text, there's instances where
Nephi says, and Laman did not believe. So, there's this underlying Hebrew wordplay, where Laman is
identified, by his name, that he's not in the covenant. He doesn't trust the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob to deliver. And therefore, Laman isn't willing to show his loyalty back to God,
whereas Nephi is absolutely willing to be loyal to God. You want me to build a boat? I'll go do
it. Nephi actually addresses the interaction of these two covenants. God is loyal to us;
therefore, we should show our loyalty to him, be committed to him by believing.
So, after he's having this exchange with his brothers, who said, you're crazy, we don't believe
that you can do this, right, we don't believe, “la aman” -- so Nephi, calling upon the memory
of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who is trustworthy, who will keep his commitments
to provide a way for his children, here’s what he says: “and [God] loveth those who will have him
to be their God.” Laman and Lemuel seem to not want God to be their God. “...Behold, he loved
our fathers, and he covenanted with them, yea, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and he remembered
the covenants which he had made; wherefore, he did bring them out of the land of Egypt.”
So again, God had covenanted to provide prosperity, property, priesthood,
posterity to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, when the Israelites were in bondage,
God remembered that he covenanted to do this, and he brought the people out,
and he asked them to covenant back to him to be loyal to him when they are in the land. Laman
and Lemuel are not doing that. Nephi is, and what Nephi is doing here is saying, this is the God we
can trust. When you hear the phrase, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this is the God
who makes covenants and keeps covenants. You can trust him to do what he says he will do.
Nephi goes on trying to convince his brothers to trust God; that if we're loyal to God,
he'll be loyal to us, and we can accomplish whatever he's asked us to do. In verse 50,
he continues, and using the theme that God will only give us commands that we can fulfill,
and that we can trust God, here is what Nephi teaches his brothers.
Verse 50: “...If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them.
If he should command me that I should say into this water, be thou earth, it should be earth;
and if I should say it, it would be done. And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has
wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me,
that I should build a ship?” I mean, really, what's harder: saving thousands of people from
Egyptian bondage and protecting them from Pharaoh's armies, or that I build a ship?
So, since I know God has done those great deeds in the past,
then I can do this seemingly great deed, which is really not that big of a deal,
compared to what God's already done. And so, in the story of Nephi providing a
path of salvation for his family because of the command of God, Nephi is covenantly committed;
he's loyal to God; that's what the Mosaic Covenant is about, is us being loyal to God,
and we show our loyalty by doing what God asks us to do. And God is under covenantal obligation
to provide a path of salvation for us, which ultimately is the covenant path, and that's Jesus.